In the press, there’s always a lot of ink spilled over a fair’s inaugural edition: Will it make the big splash it needs to in order to cement its place on the calendar? Its sophomore iteration tends to be met with a similar question: Can it sustain the momentum of year one into year two? But Year 3 tends to gain less notice, since it’s business as usual.
That’s why the biggest story to come out of third edition of Frieze Seoul, whose VIP preview was held on Wednesday, was a bit of insider baseball: a shift in the opening time. The first two editions of Frieze Seoul kicked off in the afternoon, setting off a frenzy as everyone tried to see all of the fair’s booths in just a few hours. This year, however, the doors opened at 11 a.m., giving the fair a bit of a calmer vibe today.
What should we make of the event itself? A few dealers said on Wednesday afternoon that it was still a bit early to get a complete picture of it all. There were some sales reported at the end of Day 1, though it should be noted several of these were likely pre-sold to clients and that galleries rarely disclose if those buyers come from Korea, Asia, or Europe and the US.
Dealer Thaddaeus Ropac, who has operated a space in Seoul since 2021, said he does not to pre-sell works. “It’s still early in the fair and it’s too early to come to any conclusions,” Ropac said in a statement distributed to press. “So far it’s somewhat slower on opening day in terms of sales compared to last year, but we’re not in any way worried about how things will go by the end of the fair. There is such a great dynamic in Seoul’s art scene and Frieze has really built its presence and reach here.”
Ropac’s gambit appeared to pay off: his gallery reported having sold a Georg Baselitz painting for €1 million, or about $1.11 million.
There is, at least, some great art on view here. Below, a look at the best booths at the 2024 edition of Frieze Seoul, which runs through September 7 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center.
Pacita Abad and Minouk Lim at Tina Kim Gallery
A textile painting by Pacita Abad and a sculpture by Minouk Lim pair well in Tina Kim’s booth. Titled To Paint with a Twist (1991), the Abad work features collaged fabrics onto which she has added her own abstract marks. Lim’s sculpture, Enwinded Score (2022), is imbued with recent Korean history and continues a series she began for her participation in the 2014 Gwangju Biennale. She befriended a cane maker, Eui Jin Chai, who collected felled tree branches that had an interesting look to them to create his utilitarian objects, which he would then carve. At the time of his death, Chai left more than 1,000 of those objects unfinished; they were willed to Lim. Chai survived a massacre in 1949 that killed his older brother and younger cousin, and Lim has connected this series to the Gwangju Massacre of 1980. There’s almost a talismanic quality to her cane, which here acts as a way to mark two atrocities that occurred in Korea.
—Maximilíano Durón
